by Amos Oz
At a quarter past eleven a small funeral cortège passes by the lights, only a handful of mourners, mainly elderly Ashkenazim. From his invariable stool in the doorway of Bozo Shoes, Pini Bozo asks who has died and how, and Kushner the bookbinder replies that it is old Elijah, Schatzberg the pharmacist's senile uncle, the doting old fool who kept escaping and sitting in the post office all day long; every five minutes he used to join the queue and when he got to the counter he'd ask, When's Elijah coming, and however often they chased him away he always came back.
The cortège is in a hurry. The pallbearers are almost running because the Sabbath is approaching and they still have a lot of preparations to take care of before sunset. The elderly mourners are panting with the effort, and even so a gap has opened up between the bier and the mourners and another one between the leading mourners and the ones at the back. With all the commotion the corpse, covered in a yellowing tallit, looks as though it is writhing in agony. A fair-haired, sparsely bearded religious youth hurries at the head, rattling a tin can and promising that almsgiving saves you from death. Theo reflects for a moment and concludes that it is a moot point.
In the Champs-Elysées Hairdressing Salon a noisy argument has broken out between Violette and Madeleine, the two stylists, who are sisters-in-law. Their shouts can be heard on the other side of the square. One wails, You don't even know yourself any more when you're telling the truth and when it's a filthy lie. And the other shrieks back at her, You tampon, you, don't you dare call me filthy. They have both visited Muki Peleg's bed, and perhaps still do. Muki Peleg himself is sitting over a beer in the California Café with a group of taxi drivers, and at the sound of the shouting he embarks on a detailed comparison that has his audience in gales of raucous laughter. Muki clasps the beer glass that is perspiring with cold in the six fingers of his left hand. Then they light up and talk about index-linked shares. Meanwhile, the funeral cortège has disappeared behind the Tel Kedar Local Council building, while at Gilboa's the crowd has dispersed and there are still plenty of papers for sale. Pretty Limor Gilboa is standing at the counter staring after Anat and Ohad, who have left the furniture shop and entered the Electronics Boutique. Kushner points to her with his chin and says to Bozo, Look how that one takes care of herself: she's a regular Princess Diana. Bozo remarks sadly, Until the Russian immigrants arrived, she was considered to be a national-class cello player. Now that thousands like her have come from Russia, she's become no bigger than that. That's celebrity for you: it's like water. Yesterday there wasn't any, today it's running, tomorrow there'll be none again. Do you remember a minister called Yoram Meridor? He was a household name? Always on TV? They say now he's opened a shopping mall at Netanya Junction. That's celebrity.
Theo buys Ma'ariv and a local paper, sits down in the California, and orders a grapefruit juice. Muki Peleg invites him over to his table, which he calls the Council of Torah Sages. Theo hesitates and answers, Thanks, later maybe, and Muki adds, As the condemned man said to the hangman who offered him a cigarette while he was knotting the rope.
Theo skims the headlines. Risk of renewed hostilities. Deaf-mute divorcee from Acre burns ex-husband's mistress alive. Transport Minister walks out of ceremony in protest. Gasoline prices to rise from midnight on Saturday. Security forces prevent ... In his mind's eye he follows the hasty Ashkenazi Sabbath-eve funeral cortège, which must have passed the car dump by now and reached the cemetery. First they lay the stretcher on the gravel path: like it or not, they'll have to wait for the stragglers to catch up. All the hurry was in vain: they can't begin until the last mourner gets here. The lugubrious Hungarian cantor fills his lungs with air, his face turns a furious red, and he starts to trill the prayer "O Lord Full of Compassion". He draws out the phrase, "May he repose in Paradise", he bows at, "he will face his destiny at the end of days", and the mourners say Amen. Now they push Schatzberg the pharmacist forward and tell him to repeat word for word the phrases the cantor mumbles, Magnified and sanctified, in Aramaic with an Ashkenazi accent, speedily and in our own times. Every day he disappeared but they never worried about him because he always turned up on the dot of eight o'clock at the post office, with a shy smile shining in his childlike blue eyes, the smile of a shy man who has forgotten what it was that has made him happy. The cantor begs pardon and forgiveness from the dead man if any offence has inadvertently been committed against him in the course of the preparations for the burial or the burial itself, and formally releases him from membership of any association to which he may have belonged in his lifetime. He used to come up to you in the street sometimes and bow politely, his blue eyes glowing with warmth and feeling, and address you in that soft voice of his: Forgive me, sir, would you be so kind as to inform me when Elijah is coming? That is why he was known in the town as Elijah, or sometimes as Schatzberg-the-pharmacist's Elijah.
Now the gravediggers tip the canvas, a task requiring the cooperative precision and dexterity of an operating theatre, and the sparsely bearded religious youth clasps the dead man's feet lightly and like a skilful midwife lets the wrapped body slide smoothly from the stretcher into the grave. They quickly draw away the tallit, like cutting an umbilical cord. Then they lay down five slabs of precast concrete, and set to work with spades raising a heap of earth that they mark with a rectangle made up of blocks of grey cement. On top of the mound, approximately over the deceased's noble brow, they set a metal plate inscribed not ELIJAH but GUSTAV MARMOREK RIP. The mourners wait for a couple of minutes in embarrassed silence, as if uncertain what to do next or expecting some necessary sign, then one of them stoops and lays a little stone, others follow suit, somebody makes for the gate, impatient for a smoke, and all the rest follow him, hurriedly again, it being midday on Friday, getting late. The gravedigger in charge locks the squat iron gates topped with a coil of rusty barbed wire. A few cars start up and wind their way out of sight behind the hill. Bozo the shoe-man's wife and child are buried here, in the upper section, four rows away from the soldier Albert Yeshua who, in a fit of unrequited love, killed them both with a submachine gun together with all the customers in the shop, and was killed himself ten minutes later by a single shot from a police marksman, in the middle of his forehead, between the eyes. Today's corpse has been laid to rest next to young Immanuel Orvieto from class 12C, and his aunt, who died two days after him of a cerebral hemorrhage. The boy's mother has lain for nine years now in Amsterdam. Everything is peaceful, Friday midday silence in the desert at the foot of the hill. "Wasps drone ceaselessly around a rusty, dripping faucet. And two or three birds may continue to sing there, concealed in the pine trees tested by an easterly breeze that carefully rustles them needle by needle. Immediately beyond the last graves is a steep fenced rock face that the army does not let you cross, they say behind it is a wide valley full of secret installations. Theo pays for his drink and heads back to his office. He will have another look for his Russian cleaner if her husband does not come at him with an axe. Noa will be here in a few minutes. Desert Chic Fashions, he ascertained by phone, is open till one o'clock on Fridays. In the little public gardens the blind man is still sitting with his dog, still surrounded by pigeons. Now he is pouring them some water from an army flask into a little plastic bowl. Theo has forgotten to buy the office supplies that he jotted down on a piece of paper. He'll get them next week. There's no hurry. And it also turns out that he's left his Ma'ariv, unread apart from the headlines, on the table in the California Café. He's left the local paper behind, too. Meanwhile, the simple answer is, I am sorry, sir, I have no idea when Elijah is coming or indeed if he is coming at all. I do not believe he will come. But that is not what I was asked.
SHE finally chose a light-coloured dress in a rustic, possibly Balkan, style, with a butterfly-shaped bow below the breast. She reacted to the new dress at first with girlish pleasure. In front of the mirror her shoulders and hips circled as in a dance. But after the initial joy came hesitancy. Wasn't it too folksy? Too loud? And anyway, on what sort of occasions
would she ever be able to wear a thing like this? And tell me frankly, Paula, isn't it a bit like a costume for a folk-dance company? She spent more than ten minutes agonizing between the mirror and the saleswoman, who declared that the two of them, the dress and Noa, were simply made for each other like music and good wine. Almost in the same breath she promised Noa to take out the shoulder pads, shorten the back a bit, and maybe lower the bow by an inch or so.
I stood in the corner by the cash register and said nothing. I had the feeling the saleswoman was secretly mocking, behind her façade of extravagant friendliness. But I didn't get involved. I went on standing to one side, hand in pocket, trying to identify by touch under my handkerchief the keys of the car the apartment the office and the mailbox, and then I counted the coins in my purse: eight shekels and eighty-five agorot, unless the five agorot was really another shekel coin, in which case it would make nine shekels eighty in all.
About a quarter of an hour passed before she did what she had been hoping she wouldn't do, and asked me what I thought.
Turn round, I said, stand up straight. Now walk away. That's right.
Do you like it, Theo?
It's got something, I said after thinking about it, provided you feel it's right for you. If you're not sure, don't buy it.
Noa said: But it's supposed to be a present from you.
Paula Orlev hastily intervened: It can come with this belt, or with this one. Try it tied like this, on the side, or tied in the middle, either way it's absolutely charming.
Noa looked at me suddenly with a look of Don't leave me alone, as though she were sending me a hot blast from the core of life. I shivered.
Theo?
I suggested that if she was still unsure, and it was Friday afternoon now, the dress would still be here on Sunday morning. What was the hurry?
On the way out she said: What a pity. I'd have quite liked to wear it for the weekend. I let myself be steamrollered by your logical reasoning.
I said that if on Sunday the dress still didn't please her, she could look for something more suitable on one of her next trips to Beersheba or Tel Aviv. Noa told me to stop dropping hints all the time about her trips. She would travel as and when there was a need for it, and without asking me for an exit permit. And anyway, who said she needed a new dress? What was this about dresses all of a sudden? It was you who offered to buy me a dress today, Theo, but as usual you managed to spoil it with your balanced calculations, your what's the problem, what's the hurry, on the one hand this, on the other hand that, and your regular strategy of maneuvering me into the position of a capricious little girl and your hints about my trips. It's not easy with you, Theo.
I said I didn't drop hints.
Noa said: But it's what you think. Don't deny it. You have made up your mind that I have taken on a task, no, not a task, more of a hobby, that is unnecessary, foolish and also too much for me.
I said: That's not correct.
And Noa, almost in tears: But I really do want it now. I want to wear it for the weekend. Do you mind if we go back?
We did a U-turn in front of the Kedar Hotel and drove back to Desert Chic and caught Paula Orlev just as she was shutting up shop. She opened up again for us and Noa put the Balkan dress on again. Paula said she knew we'd be back, she'd spotted at once that the dress liked Noa even more than Noa liked the dress, it looked so fresh on her, so cheeky, so cool, as her daughter always said, You must know her, Noa, Tal Orlev, you taught her in eighth grade.
When I took my credit card out Noa suddenly said, shyly, that she still wasn't a hundred percent sure. She asked me this time to tell her honestly what I thought. I said: Try to concentrate. The question is whether you feel good in this folksy dress or not.
Paula Orlev asked if I wasn't in too much of a hurry. And Noa told me to stop putting pressure on her instead of helping her make up her mind. It's so complicated with you, Theo, it's getting more and more unpleasant. The word "folksy" didn't exactly come out of the kindness of your heart. And turning to Paula she asked if she had anything similar but with less embroidery, or at least where the embroidery was less prominent.
At a quarter past two we left the shop again. Without the dress and also without that subtle affection that had joined us when we went in, left over from the night, from yesterday evening, and now we'd lost it. It didn't help when I pointed out that she, not I, had been the first to use the word "folksy". On the way home we stopped at the Palermo for a quick pizza so we shouldn't have to start making lunch at home, and by three o'clock we had somehow managed to do the weekend shopping in the supermarket and pick up the dry cleaning. Together we put the contents of the plastic bags away in the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets and our clothes in the wardrobes. Noa said she thought that Paula was one of those nice people who you can see at once get real pleasure out of making you feel good. Such people are a rare commodity. It's as if she was choosing a dress for herself, not trying to sell one to me. I liked it when we went back, and she said the dress liked me. You probably weren't listening, Theo. You didn't enjoy being there. You weren't very nice, never mind about me, but Paula really didn't deserve that Arctic blast.
An Arctic blast on a day as hot as this, I said, actually wouldn't be so terrible. And I went on, Mrs. Orlev didn't strike me the same way as she did you. She seemed calculating. But of course I may be mistaken, I may even be doing her an injustice. This made Noa express some sharp remarks about "my character"—I always feel I'm being cheated, always adopt a negative stance, in advance, and whatever the situation, I'm suspicious, defensive, as though everybody is an enemy. The whole world's against us. Anyway, that's the world according to Theo. My father was a hot-tempered, even an aggressive man, who could fly off the handle and go really wild, raging at me and throwing his transistor at me or smashing it against the wall, but he wasn't a sour man. He wasn't bitter. There are times when you're even more of a spoiled child than he was. Even more of a Neanderthal male.
Isn't your lightning judgment a bit black-and-white, Noa?
With you everything's always black-and-black.
She left the room, flushed, sparking, pushing the door to angrily, but stopping it from slamming at the last moment and closing it gently without making a sound.
She took a long shower, apparently a cold one, and then shut herself up in her bedroom to rest because in the night, she said, she had not managed to get to sleep until she dropped onto the sofa in the living room at around three o'clock in the morning: Your tension, Theo, fills the apartment like a smell.
I knew precisely what to reply. But I restrained myself. Instead I concentrated for a moment and found not tension inside myself but an unrelieved tiredness. After she shut her door I went to my own room, without the weekend Ma'ariv or the local paper that I'd left at the California Café. The BBC World Service, from London, via the relay stations in Gibraltar, Malta and Cyprus, brought me a detailed, ruthless description of the destruction of the rain forests in South America, in a series of broadcasts under the title "The Death of Nature". The rain forests brought back a few memories, whereas the expression "The Death of Nature" left me cold even though it was presumably intended to shock listeners. On the contrary: "The Death of Nature" had such a soothing effect on me that I fell asleep for twenty minutes and woke up only as the programme was ending and another; on changes in shipping routes, was beginning. The only way to help her is not to try to help. I should contain myself and say nothing. How many times have I reduced her to tears simply by trying to be helpful? Once, in her absence, I went through the whole apartment gathering her bits of paper that were scattered all over the place: on the kitchen table, on the coffee table in the living room, by the telephone, on the bookshelves in her bedroom, on shelves in the hall and the living room, and under little magnets clinging to the door of the refrigerator; on her bedside night table and on the floor at the foot of her bed. I carried all the loot oft to my room and put it down on my desk, and I spent nearly three hours sorting it out f
or her: I put letters in one pile, drafts of memos in another, public opinion surveys, excerpts she had copied in her perfect handwriting from the books in Hebrew and English that the librarian had put together for her on drugs, their cultivation and distribution, influences, addiction and rehabilitation, another pile for prospectuses, noncommittal or negative replies, some of them polite and some less so, from all sorts of institutes, organizations and bureaus, and hundreds of scraps of paper with telephone numbers or dates of meetings.
After an initial sorting I made a pile on the left-hand side of my desk of everything that had a date. I arranged them by date and subject and addressee. I copied the telephone numbers for her into a little notebook. I cleared out one of my own files for her and organized all the papers in eight compartments separated by coloured cardboard dividers on which I wrote precisely what was in each section.
Great, she said when she got in, wonderful. So logical. Thanks.
And the next moment, almost in tears: Who gave you permission, Theo? They're not yours, they're mine.
I promised. I didn't touch them again, I didn't say a word, even when the contents of the file quickly dispersed and settled again like feathers over every available surface in the apartment.
Another time I left the office one morning and popped across to the printers opposite the traffic lights to order some headed notepaper and a receipt book in the name of her committee, and I even volunteered our own address and telephone number for their temporary use. This time she neither thanked me nor turned tearful but merely said in a quiet, hard voice, as though she were admonishing a disruptive pupil: Theo, this is going to end badly.
I said: Try to understand, Noa. Concentrate for a minute. I've noticed that apart from your African benefactor, the father of the junkie, you've had at least two further gifts. Small ones admittedly. Insignificant in fact. Still, you must realize that the law of the land stipulates that for any donation, however minimal, you must issue a proper receipt. It's a criminal offence not to. Surely you don't want us to get into trouble.